Volume 1 Issue 3

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It will not be her fault. Because she too was schooled in the act of not wanting. The act of ignoring truth reared ugly like a three- legged dog. She will induct you into the fellowship of burying your face into the pillow to hide unwanted screams. We are not instilled with the courage to tell you to love yourself. But I hope you learn that sweetness like so many candied apples and pennies in the wishing well. Today you are born, and I am sorry for the nuances of womanhood that you will have to find out on your own. But know this now: I did better for you than my mother did for me. And she did better than her mother before her. Don’t you see we are all in this endless cycle? A society of Eden. Punished for the juice of the red apple. Punished for the smell, sweet, like summer. I hope one day you will remove the good book from between your knobby needs. I hope you will walk down the street in a red dress. That you will reach underneath your panties. That you won’t ignore desires like an embarrassing blat of gas. I hope you will have a daughter, and you understand that bittersweet moment of her birth.

Amanda Buck has a BA in creative writing from the University of South Florida with a minor in Theatre Arts. She is currently a second year MFA student at Rutgers Camden where she is Co-head of the Student Reading Series and a reader for Cooper Street Journal.

From the Press

Our first book offers a ride of humorous memories from the 60s and 70s alongside detailed gray-scale drawings.Learn more

Wordpool Press is a publisher of fiction and nonfiction books in both print and electronic form. We also publish short stories, poetry, and artwork in our online literary journal titled Digital Papercut. Wordpool Press aims to help talented new writers build their publishing history.